My face feels warm. They didn’t pick me. The fact that I’m alive is an accident.

“Paige, you okay?” says Trey.

Tanq peers closer. “She looks like she’s about to puke,” she says.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.

“Of course you should,” Trey says.

“I wasn’t chosen. I wasn’t a candidate.”

“Someone gave you the vaccine,” says Manny. “It might have been accidental, but I suspect someone recognized you and made a judgment call on the spot.”

“No,” I say. “At least I don’t have to worry about that. I did not get a vaccine meant for someone else. Honestly, I couldn’t live with that.”

Manny says, “I understand how hard—”

“Dude, she got sick,” Tanq says.

Manny’s eye grow as wide as basketballs.

“She was in a coma for more than a week,” Trey says. “She’s getting healthy fast, but when I met her she looked like something out of a zombie movie.” At my raised eyebrow, he says, “Sorry, Paige, but you know it’s true.”

Manny is still gaping, but his gaze roams my face, my body. My skin prickles under his scrutiny.

“I just thought she was really skinny,” Wyatt says.

I hate this feeling, that my body is a thing for everyone else to study and evaluate, like it’s not really my own. If I could crawl out of my skin and disappear somewhere I would. My foot starts to bob with nervous energy.

“If this is true,” Manny says slowly, “then you might be the only person in the whole world who has recovered from the virus naturally. You might have blood plasma that could . . . eh, I guess it doesn’t matter if everyone’s already dead. But years down the road, if we get a chance to study this virus in depth, you might provide some answers.”

He probably means it as an encouragement or something, but I flash to a potential future: me lying on a cold metal table, tubes sticking out of me, while people in lab coats and face visors poke and prod and nod knowingly to each other.

Which is ridiculous, because where is anyone going to get a clean lab coat these days?

“We thought the virus had a 100 percent mortality rate,” Manny says. “The fact that you survived . . . Even if the mortality rate was only 99.99 percent, there could be . . . If you don’t mind, Paige, I’d love to hear more about your experience. Some of the details of your illness might be helpful in—”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone the end was coming?” Trey interrupts, with a glance toward me.

I give him a quick smile of gratitude.

“You could have warned us all,” he says, “and given us a chance to put our affairs in order . . . If I could have said good-bye to Teena—”